John E. McGlade, chairman, president and chief executive officer of the Lehigh Valley's biggest publicly traded company, Air Products, credits some of his success to vocational education.

McGlade readily admits he may not have attained that three-headed title had his father not steered him toward engineering classes at Bethlehem Area Vocational Technical School while he was at Liberty High in the early 1970s.

The vo-tech schooling, grounded in hands-on learning, gave him a head start on other students at Lehigh University, where he graduated with an industrial engineering degree. A climb up Air Products' corporate ladder followed and so did his advocacy for career and technical education as a way to help students understand the level of schooling and experience needed to achieve their goals.

"The way the curriculum is developed and students are developed, they really are creating an experienced, skilled workforce for the United States," McGlade said.

That is why McGlade cannot understand why president after president has threatened to curtail funding for the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, the federal government's largest program for high school and adult career and technical education. President George W. Bush wanted to end the grant when he was in office. Now President Barack Obama wants to cut its funding by 20 percent to about $1 billion in his proposed 2012 federal budget, which aims to increase the number of students earning four-year degrees.

If Congress approves the grant cuts, layoffs could hit the Lehigh Valley's three vocational high schools.

"From a professional point of view, business point of view, absolutely, there's nothing at all wrong with trying to continue to educate our general population," McGlade said. "But not everyone needs to go to a four-year college."

Those who share McGlade's view say the focus on four-year degrees ignores the reality that people, even in a recession, can make livable wages in the building trades, auto industry and manufacturing field.

"There are many small-to-medium-size employers looking for current and future employees with the skills that we provide to our students," said Ron Roth, executive director of Career Institute of Technology in Forks, which serves students from five Northampton County school districts.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Education, which administers the grant, did not return calls for comment.

Federal budget documents indicate that under a harsh financial reality, the administration had to cut Perkins funding to shift money to "other programs that are most aligned with the president's education reform agenda." That agenda emphasizes what U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls "college- and career-ready standards."

The new standards are aimed at improving math and reading ability so fewer students need to take remedial courses when they enter college. Now, four out of every 10 new college students, and half of those at two-year institutions, take remedial courses, according to the president's "Blueprint for Reform."

The new federal education policy also highlights competitive grants that are awarded to states and school districts willing to undertake other pieces of Obama's reform agenda, such as replacing principals or staff at poor-performing schools, or tying teacher pay to student test scores.

Funding for career and technical education doesn't work like that. It's been formula based since the federal government started funding vo-techs in 1917.

Since it was signed into law in 1984, the Perkins Act — named after former U.S. Rep. Carl D. Perkins of Kentucky — also has used a formula that provides more funds to the biggest and neediest schools. The last time the law was amended was in 2006, when vo-techs were incorporated into the No Child Left Behind Act to ensure that those schools were held to the same testing standards as other high schools. As a result, vo-techs had to hire more traditional math and reading teachers as well as special education instructors.

"No Child Left Behind was a good thing," said Clyde Hornberger, director of Lehigh Career & Technical Institute in Schnecksville. "We are a better school because of it."

The grant has been cemented into budgets at CIT; Bethlehem Area Vocational Technical School in Bethlehem Township, which serves three Northampton County districts; and LCTI, which serves all districts in Lehigh County. The grant helps fund the salaries of 51 teacher and aide positions at the schools. Some of those positions would be eliminated if the cut goes through Congress, school officials said.

"We've pretty much institutionalized these funds to support primarily the special education students and also to obtain certain resources to serve all students in general," said BAVTS Executive Director Brian Williams.